Having difficulties falling asleep

Yogishammy · November 13, 2014, 8:42am

Greetings,
Some background:
I’ve been practising using the AYP-system for about ten months. I’ve been through a lot since then. Been blessed with a lot of purification, even if I experienced it as suffering for most of the time. It’s clear now. Suffering is Grace. Onwards:
About two weeks ago, my compulsive thinking stopped. It happened after I faced some “problems” head on, rather than just showing them under the bed so to speak. For this entire period, I’ve had a hard time falling asleep. I lay awake for hours, without many thoughts but very aware.
I’ve been implementing a lot of safe-pacing during my 10 months of practice, and my current practice consists of
5 min pranayama (doing good progress with mulabandha, struggling with sambhavi)
15 min meditation
5-10 min rest.
Any suggestions?
Love

Shanti · November 13, 2014, 8:49am

Hi Yogishammy,
Welcome to the AYP forums.
How close to bed time is your second practice session?

Yogishammy · November 13, 2014, 9:37am

Thank you
I usually finish about five hours prior to bed time.

Shanti · November 13, 2014, 9:44am

Try to see if you can increase the gap and/or skip pranayama in your second session and/or skip the second session for a bit.
When you go to sleep, be aware of what you may be doing, like unconscious SpB or DM.
And … [quote]
struggling with sambhavi
[/quote]
… drop sambhavi for now… no struggling needed… it will come.

Yogishammy · November 13, 2014, 9:53am

Thank you

Dogboy · November 13, 2014, 11:36am

Cosmic samyama helps me sometimes, the yogic equivalent of counting sheep!

Shanti · November 13, 2014, 12:14pm

Good choice Dogboy. Just that Cosmic Samyama is an advanced practice… may not be a very good idea for Yogishammy.
But I guess there is no harm trying it.
Here is a topic that may help as well Yogishammy
http://www.aypsite.org/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1264

Will_Power · November 13, 2014, 12:47pm

For me the best after scanning the body slowly while keeping the attention with the breath (for this you can listen to Swami J’s Yoga nidra cd which is awesome) is counting breaths (trying to reproduce the breathing that I have while asleep) while my attention rests in the Dan Tien (very close to the navel)

Yogishammy · November 13, 2014, 1:00pm

I’m going to try skipping SbP in my second session ans see if that helps.
The degree of awareness I’m experiencing at the moment is quite profound. It’s with me throughout my days. It’s like I always have a “piece” of awareness aimed in my body/mind (feelings/thoughts). Is this a bad idea? Can it result in too much purification?

Shanti · November 13, 2014, 1:09pm

Aware of awareness… yes… that’s why I asked you to watch

Centering yourself through the day is a good idea… but trying to stay aware can cause overloads. Key word is, “trying to”.
It’s like losing the mantra and coming back rather than making sure we keep the mantra during meditation. Staying in awareness has to be a natural process. If it is happening naturally, and you feel that’s what’s causing the sleeplessness, then back off practices.

Dogboy · November 13, 2014, 4:42pm

Keep an eye on me Shanti!
I’m liable to do, or say anything!

Shanti · November 14, 2014, 7:34am

(o)||(o) <— watching you!!!

SeySorciere · November 14, 2014, 7:50am

- I thought I was the only one reacting that way to Cosmic Samyama. I never get to finish a round.
Sey

Yogishammy · November 23, 2014, 5:59am

I’m lost again. Drowning in anxiety and thought. I can feel the anxiety in my body.
Two nights ago I had a dream. I was playing football (soccer) in my middle school gymnasium. I was forcing things, using a lot of willpower. There was very little flow, no art in my style of play. Suddenly an invisible “beeing” was in possession of the ball, telling me “Still lost in thought, still trapped in time”. And that’s my current state of mind I guess.
I don’t know what to do.
PS:
My ability to fall asleep has returned to normal

BlueRaincoat · November 23, 2014, 6:46am

Hi Yogishammy
Seems like a self-pacing issue to me.
I think I’d abandon mulabandha and sambhavi for now and try to get stable on the SBP and DM routine. Perhaps some trimming is necessary there too. Just till you integrate the energy you’ve raised so far, then you will be able to increase the length of your sessions again.
Hope you find the right balance soon

Shanti · November 23, 2014, 3:49pm

Glad you are sleeping well again. . Do you mind if I ask what helped? Your sharing may help others who have the same problem.
“Drowning in thoughts and anxiety”, have you tried to isolate the thoughts and do some inquiry into them? Practices will bring to light blocks/fears stored in us, it may help to look into them and see through them and let them go.
Dreams at times are just a mirror of what is going on with us during the day… Your dream may have tried to show you your fear… instead of drowning in that fear, shed some light on it. Fears are more real when hidden and ignored (kept in the dark), when we shine light on them by being honest and looking at the reality of it, they lose their power. At times doing inquiry on your own helps, at times talking about it with someone helps. Just remember fears keep a lot of energy tied up, seeing through them and letting them go relaeases a lot of bound up energy/blocks.
Hope this helps.

Yogishammy · November 24, 2014, 6:46am

BlueRaincoat
I’ve decided to drop pranayama altogether, and cut the meditation down to 10 min per session. I will try this routine out for a week or two and see how it goes.
Thank you
Shanti
As I slipped back to my ordinary…umm… level of consciousness, it just returned. Maybe I didn’t need as much sleep when I was aware of awareness, but still tried to stick to my bed time routines.
Yes, I’m sure I do have lots of fear stuck in me. As I wrote in my original post, the compulsive thinking stopped when I faced some of those fears head on. It was very clear it helped. Felt such peace afterwards.
I’m not sure how to do inquiry. Yet it felt as if I was doing it all the time between 13 Nov - 20 Nov. With constant awareness of thoughts and feelings, it was easy to just “feel the fear, and do it anyway”. How can I shed light on the fear? Should I like, sit quitly and watch the thoughts/feelings?
I might have been clinging to that state of being. When I felt it was slipping away, fear took over. Instead of trimming practices, I actually added siddhasana. Looking back, it wasn’t the brightest thing to do. But I must forgive myself. In the end, neither of these two levels of consciousness can be what I really am, even if one of them probably is a little closer.
Thank you

Shanti · November 25, 2014, 8:16am

Hi Yogishammy,
Thanks for sharing.
If you ask me, I would highly recommend reading The Work by Byron Katie. It starts off with a very practical level inquiry… but over time (as our access to inner silence increases) it changes into a powerful technique of seeing and letting go.
I had written a post a while back on what kind of inquiry works depending on where we think we are.
http://www.aypsite.org/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=9607#82630

Shanti:

Self Inquiry techniques are practices that help us see how our mind works and go beyond the mind. Depending on what stage we are at in our path, we can do different kinds of self inquiry.
The best way to know what kind of self inquiry will work is to read this lesson Lesson 327 – The Evolutionary Stages of Mind
When you go through that lesson you will see, there are 5 stages of the mind:
Pre-Witnessing
Witnessing
Discrimination
Dispassion
Unity
As we continue cultivating inner silence and purifying our nervous system though our practices, we will move through the above stages of the mind.
Adding any self inquiry technique in the pre-witness stage is going to result in trying to understand the mind with the mind, which Yogani calls a non-relational self inquiry. At this point, self inquiry is more an exercise in playing mind games. At this stage we can add some self inquiry techniques with the help of another person(therapist, friend, self inquiry teacher). Some of these techniques would be “The Work” by Byron Katie, “REBT” (Rational emotive behavior therapy) by Albert Ellis, Real Love by Greg Baer. Most of these will work when done with someone who knows the technique and can help us see the pitfalls of the mind. If we are ready to accept and see these pitfalls, we can get some relief from the suffering we cause ourselves with thinking.
Then once we are in the witness stage, we can see that there is a “mind” making things happen in our life. This stage, we still cannot separate “our self” from our mind, but we can see how the mind is keeping all our suffering in place. This is when we start doing inquiry from within, from stillness, this is what Yogani calls relational self-inquiry. At this stage we can practice self inquiry techniques like “The Work” by Byron Katie, “REBT” (Rational emotive behavior therapy) by Albert Ellis, Real Love by Greg Baer on our own to start separating the mind from the self. This is a great place to start samyama too.
The next is the Discrimination stage. Here we are more rooted in stillness.
At this point we can take the mind level inquiry techniques and drop them in silence (that is why it is great to start samyama in the witness stage, we have enough silence in the witness satge to start the more mechanical process of picking a sutra and dropping it in silence). For example the work has a final step of 'Embracing Reality"… this is the hardest step at the pre-witness level, it gets a bit easier at the witness level, but in the discrimination stage, we can embrace the reality by just dropping it in stillness. In fact most of those self inquiry techniques become refined and practices like the work becomes a case of asking “is it true?” dropping in stillness and at times the answers arising from stillness without even having to go through the full process.
This is also a great time to work with the 'gap technique", because now we have enough stillness to to be able to catch the gap between thoughts. The “neti neti technique” - not this, not this… as we can again let go in stillness whatever thoughts/ideas may be arising.
It is a great stage to really work with samyama, becasue now samyama is getting more and more powerful with the increased level of silence. We can start incorporating samyama with prayer and healing and self inquiry, etc.
This is also a great point to start the “Who Am I” inquiry. Now more answers are coming from stillness.
There is more from Yogani in this lesson: http://www.aypsite.org/350.html
Dispassion is when we can now let go in stillness naturally. Here, samayama becomes a natural practice. When there is discomfort, we pick it up and let it go in stillness and without making it a formal practice. “Who Am I” kind of self inquiry takes on a life of its own and becomes more about naturally moving away from the association with body/mind and getting in touch with awareness. It is more about becoming the screen (awareness) on which the movie of life is playing.
Unity is when we live samyama. Now, there is complete trust and letting go happening every moment. There is not a doing, there is only living. The mind may still poke it’s head through the doors, but there is awareness of what is going on at all times. Now self inquiry is not a practice, it is a way of life. You are the screen… nothing is not you… it is all one… it is experiencing the duality in the “one”… the non-dual.
None of these are distinct phases, they overlap with the stage before and after them and at times it may feel like moving from one to another and moving back. But when you are in discrimination, you cannot go back to the pre-witness stage permanently, or when you are in dispassion you cannot go back to the witness stage permanently, as long as you are continuing with your practices.

Yogishammy · November 26, 2014, 9:25am

It was such an eye opener reading about the different stages of the mind. Ty.

sunyata · November 27, 2014, 8:25am

Thank you so much for reposting this Shanti . It helped clear out some confusions.
Sunyata